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Sadly, IPM is drawing to a close. I have enjoyed so much reading all your interesting posts and fantastic makes. The sewing blog community is full of amazing talented people. Thanks too to our lovely hosts at TMS, who have worked so hard to make this month such a success! Thank you Kat, Mel and Juliet!

Last year, the monthly stitch ran a competition for drafting a new pattern and I did think about entering this. I had already made a couple of garments from self-drafted patterns, but with a deadline of a few weeks to digitize the patterns I didn’t think I could manage to enter. This year, I am unleashing my pattern, the Viale Skirt on the world for my entry for One pattern, Two takes!

I’ve made two versions of the skirt which are quite different; a black version with white piping and a denim version with top-stitching.

Design
The skirt is quite a simple design with five main pieces – a skirt back and front and three yoke pieces. There are optional in-seam pockets and the design can be livened up with piping or top-stitching.

Instructions / Construction
The skirt is quite an easy make, but the extras are the more the tricky elements. I made the version with the white piping first. Probably the trickiest part was making sure the piping lined up in all the right places – along the side seams and level each side of the zip. I used some spotty bias-binding for the hem. Furthermore, I got to use up some scraps from my fabric stash too using a black and white paisley print poplin for the yoke lining and pockets.

I top-stitched the circle detail for the denim version; as you may know, I can never resist top-stitching!. I used a floral cotton lawn for yoke lining on the denim version.

Fabric and Notions
The black and white version is made from black cotton drill from Plush Addicts. I made my own piping using some white satin bias-binding and rat’s tail. I also used two small buttons and an invisible zip.
The denim version used a mid-blue denim from Fashion Fabrics in Bath. The top-stitching was in a contrasting brown-orange colour.

I’ve actually been wearing the black version for a little while now. It was, in fact made at the end of May. I like the length and being black and white I can team it up with many different items in my wardrobe. I think it is quite a striking skirt and is a little reminiscent with the bold Mondrian dresses of the sixties which I really admire (despite not being a dress-lover!)

The denim version was unbelievably quick to make. I suppose, it was probably because all the work on fitting was done and I was well-practised with sewing the skirt by this time. However, I’m not so sure about the skirt itself. it jut seems to be missing something. Perhaps I’ll grow to like it. I’m wearing it today and it is comfortable and is just right for the current sunny weather.

If you would like to try out this pattern I’m sharing it for free on Steely Seamstress. If you like it, tell me! If you find any mistakes or have any ideas for improvements let me know as well – I’ll make a revised version once I’ve got some feedback.

awesomely good job setting up the pdf pattern and instructions. If you were planning to sell the pattern I think its quite up to standard with some minimal tweaking. I can’t give you any critique on the fit of the garment as you haven’t graded up to my size(18) My main constructive suggestion would be to crop some of the large areas of unnecessary background from some of the images and to scale the image sizes down a bit. Colour printing will be fine for a lot of people but others will fret about the quantity of ink. With smaller images you should be able to compact the instruction booklet to perhaps 12 pages or less. Your assembly instruction text is excellent

Thanks for your kind comments. Note taken about the unnecessary background on the images in the instructions – that should be easy to sort out. It’s interesting what you say about sizing – that’s why I thought I’d put the pattern out in the community to see the response. So far, I’ve really just been making for myself, it’s how most people start making clothes, and then just graded up and down. Think I’ll have to find a willing volunteer / victim for other sizes. I also has some feedback on this page – https://steelyseamstress.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/skirt-experiments/ about sizing. I did standardize my sizing, but now I’m wondering whether I shouldn’t. I’ve noticed that your designs are designed with the wider mid-riff in mind and I wondered whether you’d gone for some standard sizing or not.